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Stewed Chicken

A whole chicken stuffed with breadcrumbs, onion, lemon peel, parsley, thyme, egg, and butter, stewed with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Stuff the chicken with a mixture of bread crumbs, onion, lemon peel, parsley, thyme, whipped egg, and butter.

  2. Place a piece of fat over the breast of the chicken.

Stew

  1. Put the chicken into a stewpan with 2 tablespoons of butter.

  2. Leave it uncovered for 5 minutes.

  3. Cover and cook for 1.5 hours.

  4. Add ½ cup of cream.

  5. Place the stewpan over a hotter part of the fire.

  6. Baste thoroughly before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Whole chicken
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender as it stews.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices in the stuffing, keeping it moist and giving it body.
Whipped egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the chicken brown and taste rich.
Cream
Adds richness and smooths the cooking liquid into a silky sauce.

The step that matters

Cover and cook for 1.5 hours. Long, gentle, covered cooking lets collagen in the chicken break down so the meat turns tender and juicy. Cooking too hard or too fast can toughen the meat and dry out the stuffing.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, lemon, parsley, thyme, egg, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, lemon, parsley, thyme, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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